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Marching behind a true mentor

The Times Union March, by Gerald Zaffuts,
World premiere performance, May 19, 2014, by the
Guilderland High School Wind Ensemble,
Kathleen Ehlinger, director.

Media: Times Union

This is a story about a piece of music that had its world premiere this week in our community. But the story is really about the way music can change people. Or maybe it's about how one person can change so many others, with music as simply the vehicle for that growth.

Of course, I'm partial to the piece because of its name. But the Times Union is far from the first newspaper to have music named for it. Sousa's classic Washington Post March is the best-known, but dozens of newspapers had their names attached to music in the era between the Civil War and World War I, when America had thousands of community bands.

Back then, every community of any size also had its own newspaper, so it wasn't unusual for a newspaper to commission a composition for the local band.

There's no record that anybody wrote a piece named for the Times Union — until Gerry Zaffuts did last year.

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Rex Smith is editor of the Times Union. Share your thoughts at http://blog.timesunion.com/editors.

Zaffuts grew up locally and has been teaching hereabouts for more than 30 years. He has been coaching both the young musicians of Guilderland and their wind ensemble director, Kathleen Ehlinger, for several years. When he decided to write a march for them, he honored historic tradition by naming it for his hometown newspaper.

The world of local music educators is a small one. They know each other and often make music together. Students sometimes return to become colleagues of their former teachers. In that realm, Zaffuts is something of a singular figure. He achieved renown not in a rich suburban district, where teenagers often get years of private music lessons, but in Averill Park, a mostly rural Rensselaer County district that had no great history of music education until his arrival.

More than 20 years ago, Zaffuts, a trombonist who had started the acclaimed jazz program at Skidmore College and was teaching at the University at Albany, stepped in when the Averill Park band director died just before the school's spring concert. The kids were hurting. It was a temporary gig, Zaffuts thought, because a high school band director wasn't the kind of professional musician he saw himself being.

"But you know how, if you're lucky, you find what you're meant to do?" he now says. "To have these students' eyes opened to what music can do, to its healing power, was really something. It was transformative."

When he retired three years ago after he and his groups had won many accolades, Zaffuts was already working with Ehlinger and her fine band, in the sort of laying on of hands that is the way artistic insights are often passed down. The march — his first — was a fruit of that partnership.

Under the right leader, a musical ensemble can be a marvelous thing. It requires excellence of skills born in discipline, and collaboration toward a shared goal. Athletes talk about their teams that way, too, but when you add music to that effort, moments best described as spiritual can arise. Teachers able to both open kids' hearts and train their ears for this experience are treasures.

If you're not persuaded that music-making is itself value enough, then consider the scientific studies confirming other ways that music education helps kids. Young people who have developed musical ability do better in their other coursework and on standardized tests. They display more of the collaborative skills required in the modern workplace. They bring stronger focus to detail. They have more self-confidence and are better communicators.

How valuable is that kind of training in our schools? What would you give for a teacher who can inspire that in your kid?

Yet tight budgets have prompted school boards and administrators in recent years to pull back music and other arts offerings. Tough choices have to be made, we hear, and American schools need to emphasize STEM skills — science, technology, engineering and math.

It doesn't add up. If we expect our schools to shape young people ready to assume the responsibilities of citizenship, we can't shortchange their exposure to the arts, and to teachers like Gerald Zaffuts.

This is personal for me. My greatest teacher was a high school band leader. His patient mentorship and insistence on excellence still inspire me, all these decades later. And when I hear The Times Union March, I see ranks of kids stepping off, heading toward a future that they're ready to face because of such great mentors along the way.